Greg Rucka - Critical Space

I thought about Antonia Ainsley-Hunter, about how much I genuinely liked her, about how impressed I was with the way she used her life. I was proud to have protected her.

I was proud that she trusted me to do it again.

Ten days later, Dale and I were working in the conference room when the temp at the front desk buzzed us on the intercom. We'd spent the morning on a risk analysis for the area around De Witt Clinton High School in the Bronx, where Lady Ainsley-Hunter would speak in the morning on the second day of her visit. She was going to address the students in the school auditorium, then do the meet-and-greet with members of the local Together Now chapter. Dale and I had driven the area, checking the approaches, then done a walk-through. We'd snapped three-dozen photographs and drawn maps, then dropped the film off at a one-hour place and grabbed lunch.

Now we were back in the office, trying to determine what the safest route to and from the school was, rather than the quickest. Dale was tacking the relevant pictures to the corkboard at the far end of the room and I was going through the Hagstrom atlas of the five boroughs, tracing out our route and transcribing it longhand onto a legal pad. Natalie and Corry were at the Edmonton, performing yet another walk-through of rooms.

When the intercom on the phone beeped, I poked the button with the pen. "Yeah?"

"Mr. Kodiak?" the temp said. "A Ms. Chris Havel is in reception. She doesn't have an appointment. She says she has something to give you."

"I'll just bet she does," Dale muttered, thumbtacking another photograph to the corkboard.

"Tell her I'll be right out," I told the intercom, then came off the button, capped my pen, and got up.

"If she only brought a copy for you, I'll be insulted," Dale said.

"If she only brought a copy for me, you'll have every right to be," I said.

She was waiting at the end of the hallway, smiling as I approached. It'd been almost seven months since I'd seen Chris Havel last, and she didn't look different, but there was a new air about her. Her short hair was artistically disheveled, and her skin had the luster that people get from either healthy living or expensive salons. What I knew about her led me to believe it was the latter. She had a book-bag hanging from one shoulder, black leather, Italian, and that was new; her old book-bag had been canvas, olive drab, Kmart. In her left hand she had a paper shopping bag.

"Thanks for seeing me," Chris said. "I probably should have made an appointment, huh?"

"I can give you ten minutes without the world ending," I assured her, then gestured to my office. When we got inside, she moved straight to the gallery wall, studying each frame. I settled behind the desk and waited for her to finish. When she had, she flopped on the couch like an exhausted teenager, letting her book-bag drop to the floor and putting the shopping bag on the coffee table. From inside she removed a stack of gift-wrapped packages, gold foil paper with a blue ribbon tied neatly around each.

"That it?" I asked.

"Oh, yeah." She took the top package from the stack, then flipped it my way as if throwing a Frisbee.

It was a hardcover copy of her book. The dust jacket was in matte black, with two traditional theatre masks on the cover, both in an embossed, glossy silver. One of the masks was Tragedy, the other Comedy. In Tragedy's left eye glistened a tear of blood. On the back of the dust jacket were quotes from a whole bunch of people I'd never heard of before, saying things like "Terrifying!" and "A revelation!" and "Possibly the most definitive work on the subject ever!"

Her signature was on the title page, with an inscription. The inscription read, To Atticus- Thanks for almost blowing me up.

"You're welcome," I told her. "Next time I'll try harder."

"That was murder to come up with. I never realized how damn hard it is to inscribe a book." She patted the stack. "You were the easy one, too. I had no idea what to say to Corry and Dale. Are they here?"

"Dale's working in the conference room. Natalie and Corry are out right now. If you want to leave the books with me, I'll make sure they get theirs."

"You're busy."

"We are," I agreed.

"I'll leave these with you, then." She settled back on the couch and put her feet on the coffee table, giving me no sign that she was ready to leave. "I tried to do well by you guys. Tried to be honest. You'll have to let me know what you think."

"I will," I said, closing the book and putting it to one side of the desk, by the phone. "Any word on how it's doing?"

"The book's not officially out until Monday, and we've already sold through the first print run just on the advance orders. My publisher is going back to press, this time fifty thousand copies in hardcover, can you believe it? They're talking about the Times list like it's a sure thing."

"I'm impressed."

She shook her head and made a vague gesture with her hands, telling me to wait, that there was more to come. "Gets even wilder. I mean, I've got a literary agent, he's just sold my second book, the publisher wants it ASAP, and the advance is an embarrassing amount of money, believe me. I've got another agent, the Hollyweird one, and he called this morning with an offer for the movie rights, and that makes the advance for book two look like the change you'd find in a gutter."

I realized that what I'd thought was delight in her was actually shock.

"I go on tour next Monday, I'm supposed to do radio and television and Internet chat rooms and PBS and the whole shebang. People are calling my agent, badgering him to get interviews scheduled and crap like that. I'm waiting to wake up, Atticus, waiting for someone to call and say there's been a terrible mistake, they don't mean my book, they mean someone else's book, some other Chris Havel."

"I'm happy for you," I said, and I was, but my voice didn't carry the sincerity, and she caught it. Hurt crossed her face for a second, then vanished.

"No, no, I didn't use your names," she said. "All the names were changed."

The relief was like a car rolling off my chest.

"Was that it? What was bugging you?"

"That was it," I said. "Thank you, Chris."

"Maybe you shouldn't thank me, yet. You're in the acknowledgments, you and the rest, and I mention the firm, too. Anyone paying close attention, they'll figure it out, but…"

"We can survive that."

Havel straightened on the couch, letting her feet drop back to the floor. "That scared you?"

"The thought of more publicity actually makes my blood run cold," I confessed.

"Is that it? Not that you're afraid she'll, uh…" Havel made a gesture with her right hand, as if shooting a gun.

"Not anymore."

She came forward on the couch, perching on the end, actively curious. "Really?"

"It would be pointless. It's too late to keep the book from being released, so the only other reason to come after us would be revenge, and I don't believe that factors into her world."

Havel considered, then sighed, leaning back once more. "There were a couple of times when I was writing, I got really scared. Working on a passage, and it would hit me that this was real, that I was writing about this secret, that she was out there, she and others… and I was afraid to go outside, I was afraid to stay indoors, I was afraid to be with people, I was afraid to be alone…"

"Been there," I said.

"Yeah, I'm sure you have."

For a couple of seconds we shared a silent appreciation of fear.

"I'm supposed to be working on the next one," Havel said. "My new book. They want it yesterday, kind of a sequel to the first one, something along the same lines. Another book about The Ten."

"Good luck with the research," I said.